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Before I get to anything else, I'd like to rec a fic. I had no specific intention of participating in the reccing and feedbacking meme that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scatteredlogic passed around, but I found this story through ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
spnnewsletter and had to comment.
It's called Sacrificial, and it's byrillaotvalley. I'm not sure, of course, but she may be the same Rilla who was in HP fandom for eons.
In any case, it's Dean/OFC, wherein Dean is married with an infant daughter. Normally, such a premise would send me screaming in the opposite direction, because Domesticated!Dean is usually done very badly. Writers either turn him into a spineless schmoop or pair him up with a female version of himself-a swaggering, beer-guzzling, poker-swindling, shotgun-toting, pool-sharking chick who, despite such hard living, manages to look like Portia di Rossi or Cindy Crawford in her heyday.
Thankfully, there is none of that here. Dean is delightfully Dean, throughout-tough, no-nonsense, and freighted with a lifetime of guilt-, and Kate is just an ordinary woman who finds herself in extraordinary thanks to the Yellow-Eyed man. She bitches and blames and collects emotional currency for future blackmail, but she also loves Dean very much.
My only problem with her-and I suspect that this was intentional and not a failure on the part of the writer-is that, despite her protestations to the contrary, she has a martyr complex a mile wide. Over and over again, she tells herself that she's at peace with being in third place in Dean's heart, but she clearly isn't. The very fact that she constantly considers and touches upon that knowledge in her narration proves that. She wants to be at peace with it for Dean and for herself, but wish and reality are often miles apart
What tips her from admirable self-awareness to cloying martyrdom for me is the scene in the nursery where Dean argues the existence of the hierarchy she has constructed in her mind. While it may be true that it does exist, her smug self-assurance that he is in denial on that count, and that she will suffer this knowledge in silence, grates like hell.
Sam is well-written in the fic, though he, too, falls prey to schmoop when he asks to touch Kate's belly and immediately tears up. It was a bit twee for my tastes. Otherwise, Sam was spot-on, the nurturing peacemaker who is an amalgam of naivete and terrible understanding.
The writing itself is beautiful. First-person is difficult to manage without lapsing into passivity, but Rilla handles it with grace and panache and weaves a tale that another reviewer rightfully likened to a fairy tale.
So, if you've the time and enjoy Supernatural, give it a look.
Last night, I thought I heard mutinous glurgings from my bathroom drain. Those of you who have read this LJ for a long time might remember this post from June of 2006, when the the septic system rebelled after years of swallowing my gastrointestinal horrors. Ever since, I, a plumber's daughter, have been on the alert for sounds of yet another insurrection. I'm afraid I'll wake up eye to partially-digested niblet with the shepherd's pie I enjoyed and so callously tossed aside with an indifferent flush six months ago. Nothing happened, but I am still on my guard.
A first pimp for Part VII of Danse Macabre.
scatteredlogic passed around, but I found this story through spnnewsletter and had to comment.It's called Sacrificial, and it's by
rillaotvalley. I'm not sure, of course, but she may be the same Rilla who was in HP fandom for eons.In any case, it's Dean/OFC, wherein Dean is married with an infant daughter. Normally, such a premise would send me screaming in the opposite direction, because Domesticated!Dean is usually done very badly. Writers either turn him into a spineless schmoop or pair him up with a female version of himself-a swaggering, beer-guzzling, poker-swindling, shotgun-toting, pool-sharking chick who, despite such hard living, manages to look like Portia di Rossi or Cindy Crawford in her heyday.
Thankfully, there is none of that here. Dean is delightfully Dean, throughout-tough, no-nonsense, and freighted with a lifetime of guilt-, and Kate is just an ordinary woman who finds herself in extraordinary thanks to the Yellow-Eyed man. She bitches and blames and collects emotional currency for future blackmail, but she also loves Dean very much.
My only problem with her-and I suspect that this was intentional and not a failure on the part of the writer-is that, despite her protestations to the contrary, she has a martyr complex a mile wide. Over and over again, she tells herself that she's at peace with being in third place in Dean's heart, but she clearly isn't. The very fact that she constantly considers and touches upon that knowledge in her narration proves that. She wants to be at peace with it for Dean and for herself, but wish and reality are often miles apart
What tips her from admirable self-awareness to cloying martyrdom for me is the scene in the nursery where Dean argues the existence of the hierarchy she has constructed in her mind. While it may be true that it does exist, her smug self-assurance that he is in denial on that count, and that she will suffer this knowledge in silence, grates like hell.
Sam is well-written in the fic, though he, too, falls prey to schmoop when he asks to touch Kate's belly and immediately tears up. It was a bit twee for my tastes. Otherwise, Sam was spot-on, the nurturing peacemaker who is an amalgam of naivete and terrible understanding.
The writing itself is beautiful. First-person is difficult to manage without lapsing into passivity, but Rilla handles it with grace and panache and weaves a tale that another reviewer rightfully likened to a fairy tale.
So, if you've the time and enjoy Supernatural, give it a look.
Last night, I thought I heard mutinous glurgings from my bathroom drain. Those of you who have read this LJ for a long time might remember this post from June of 2006, when the the septic system rebelled after years of swallowing my gastrointestinal horrors. Ever since, I, a plumber's daughter, have been on the alert for sounds of yet another insurrection. I'm afraid I'll wake up eye to partially-digested niblet with the shepherd's pie I enjoyed and so callously tossed aside with an indifferent flush six months ago. Nothing happened, but I am still on my guard.
A first pimp for Part VII of Danse Macabre.
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